Do you believe that what you have seen or heard did indisputably happen, exactly as you remember it? Then I will soon have to disappoint you. In fact you have not seen or heard exactly what you think you have seen or heard. Your brain plays tricks on you. It invents a lot!
Horror Vacui (Fear of the void)
The brain, or the consciousness, cannot stand void or emptiness. It fears it so much that if it occurs, it must instantly fill it with something. If there is something you do not know, you immediately start to fill the gap with speculations, assumptions and pure guesswork. This quality is the basis for human curiosity and thus for creativity. It is the driving force of philosophy, science and religion. We have to know. We build theories and models that help us structure reality or what we perceive as reality, in a comprehensible way. This helps us fill the gaps of information with - as our brain thinks – plausible assumptions. Yet we are dealing with models, not with reality itself, which, to our deep frustration, remains out of reach. The models serve as structures for our thinking and make it possible for us to deal with simple as well as complicated concepts. To be useful, a model has to correspond sufficiently to what we perceive as reality in the aspects which are relevant for the context.
No model is true and none is false. A model exists because it is useful for those adhering to it. A religion is a model to handle complicated concepts of a metaphysical or ethical nature; good & evil, life & death, the origins & the end of the world, etc.; science is a model, or many models; many political ideologies are models; languages are models.
Language
To make this easier, let us look closer at language. Unlike politics, religion, etc., it is less sensitive and less prone to trigger a strong emotional defence reflex.
I think it is obvious to everyone that language is not reality, but a collection of sounds and signs representing reality. It has developed differently in different groups of people. Basically it is reasonable to believe that the language of a certain group developed as a reflection of their way of thinking, of their thinking pattern. That is to say, it (the language) shows how they (the people who developed it) were structuring their view of reality. It served as a model of their inner and outer lives and made it possible for them to communicate about it with one another.
This is how it started. The way of thinking in a specific group shaped the structure of the language they developed. Subsequent generations continuously reshaped it, but much of its main structure remained. It formed the basis of the language taught to the children and implanted this very pattern of thinking in them, thus making it permanent. The direction had changed. Now language shaped thinking! A culture was born!
Humans all around the world have much in common. Everywhere, people's lives rotate around similar problems and similar concepts. Yet their languages have become structured in so many different ways. All these languages/models are essentially different ways to structure the same things.
So we see, models are not true or false. They just represent different ways to arrange information, which can be the whole "reality" or any part thereof.
The structure/model is not inherent in the reality it represents; it is inherent in the thoughts of those who use it. In this meaning it is a tool to create a comprehensible order where (to our knowledge) no order exists. An order in our thoughts, and only there. When our brain cannot identify a clear order, it invents one. Why? To be able to create in some way "logical" imaginings for the purpose of filling gaps.
Sensory Perception
Our models are arranging things for us, but what things? Where do we find the data we structure or process through our models? At the bottom of this we always have our sensory perception, what we see, hear, smell, taste and feel. This is the raw material from which everything is built. There is just one problem. Our brain plays tricks on us. You do not see first and believe afterwards, but you believe first and see things accordingly. What you believe you have seen is often what you believe you should have seen - which is not always what you really saw. It is analogous with hearing and the other senses of perception.
The Blind Spot
Open a book. Close your left eye and let your right eye focus on the first letter of a line. Let your index finger follow the line, from left to right. Keep your right eye focused on the first letter but let your attention follow the finger. You might need to try this a few times, because it is hard not to move the eye.
You should see that the fingertip disappears from sight when you approach the right end of the line. After a couple of centimetres, it turns up again.
You have experienced the blind spot. That is a small area, insensitive to light, in the retina where the optic nerve enters. It has been known for at least 2500 years. The strange thing about it is not that it is a blind spot, but that we need to use a special trick to make it noticeable. Our brain simply fills the hole in vision with something it believes should be there! What we see is a lie, but we do not notice that!
The brain does not accept void, it has to fill it with something it believes to suit there. If you are not aware of this, it can become a serious problem, a source of errors and endless misunderstandings, not at least in human relations.
The most drastic everyday application of this is something everyone experiences almost daily in communication with others. If you talk with a friend, and a week later you both have to relate what the conversation was about - you will tell completely different stories, unless you are very aware of the brain's tricks and have really trained yourself not to fall into its traps.
Do you listen to what another person really says? If you are like most people, the answer is no. What a talking person says is always incomplete. You interpret the few facts you get, and then you use that interpretation to fill in the gaps of information and complete what has not been said. You fill them with prejudgements, assumptions and guesswork; with imagined information, which - according to your frames of reference - would be the most likely, given the facts you build on. The problem is that your frames of reference are not the same as the speaking person's frames of reference. Often most of your imagined information is totally wrong. Yet you think it is clearly expressed facts. Your brain cheats you!
Now consider that both parties of a conversation are doing this, and that the "misinformation" which is continually created influences the conversation while it is taking place. The misunderstandings are countless, and it is really astonishing that people can communicate meaningfully at all.
After a week of processing in the brain, the data is even more distorted by memory, which is as unreliable as is perception.
Interpretation destroys much of the face value of sensory perception and of communication. When you see or hear something, you interpret it. Your brain is processing it through your mind-set (your models of thinking, your memory, etc.) and it produces assumptions (to fill the gaps) and conclusions, often erroneous, which you believe are facts. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing.
Misunderstandings rule the world on every level, from everyday errors to the cause of wars. Most of them depend on the brain's horror vacui, fear of the void, which makes it produce subjective and "false" information and makes you believe it is true.
Let us take a look at an example which may be entertaining and serious at the same time.
A man went to an eye specialist to get his eyes tested. After the eye specialist wrote out a prescription for his eyes, he asked, "Doctor, will I be able to read after wearing glasses?"
"Yes of course", said the eye specialist.
"Oh... How interesting", said the man, "I have been illiterate all my life!"
What is happening here? The patient is illiterate, but that is something the doctor could not suspect, so he gives the wrong answer, which is based on taking something for granted, something that is not said and not true. The doctor assumed something based on his own frames of reference, without considering if they were universal.
What can you do to avoid similar errors?
Listen to what a person really says. Take care not to confuse assumptions, guesswork and your own conclusions with what is really said. Do not take anything for granted. Judge by what you really know.
Read the whole series:
1. Brain & Horror Vacui (Fear of the void)
2. History – Understand the Present by Understanding the Past
3. Memory as Soft or Hard History
4. Bandwidth Of Brain and Consciousness
Other related articles:
COLOUR & NEGATIVE REALITY: Do we sometimes see what is not?
What is Special with Number 7?
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I loved your article you are absolutely right